Parallax Abstraction wrote on May 9, 2012, 14:12:What Apple has going for it is an absolutely ridiculous profit margin (in the range of 30%)... that gives them a lot of room to play with going forward. If sales drop off, they can always reduce prices or introduce hardware with narrower margins if need be and remain profitable.

It's already being questioned if Apple is going to be selling the Macbook Air for $799 so that would be a sign of their dropping sales (OSX sales were down this year). I think part of the issue of as to why might have been because the honeymoon is over for many of their customers. I've had friends point out that their Mac was their first and last one they will buy for many reasons. All of them being around the hype of Apple and the reality being far different.

Beamer wrote on May 7, 2012, 09:06:What's fun is that this isn't unique to video games.

Want to buy a machine for a factory or even a doctor's office? There's a click fee involved, so every time you use that machine you send some cash to the company that made that machine.

I'm getting laser eye surgery and when I was in for my consultation the doctor was telling me all about the scheme for his laser as you describe. He was showing me these cards that are one time use that cost him some ridiculous amount of money. My mind immediately jumped to DRM/DLC and I had to stop myself from chuckling as I listened to his rage which was along the lines of "These greedy fucking assholes already charged me $5 million for the laser and now they want another $500 every time I use it!"

When I got laser eye surgery, they didn't tell me that... awww...

Granted when they were describing what would happen and they mentioned that I won't be able to blink and they will having something to hold my eye open I immediately said "So it'll be like in Clockwork Orange?" Needless to say they quickly told me no, but was a new one they would have to tell the surgeons.

TychoCelchuuu wrote on May 6, 2012, 15:51:It's a problem because the "D" in "DLC" stands for "downloaded" or "downloadable" or whatever, and the reason it stands for that is because they traditionally couldn't have non-downloaded DLC because it was content released after the game came out, and thus it couldn't be on the disc.

Nah, I think that's bullshit. The terms are disclosed fully, and I don't see how anyone could be legitimately upset about it. Some people just need an excuse to whine I guess.

Or some people feel that being price gouged for the sake of greed is a bad thing I guess.

Wallshadows wrote on May 1, 2012, 00:00:After working tech support for an interactive whiteboard company for a few years, you would be surprised about how often things like this happen where teachers will simply trust their students or completely neglect their tech.

I dealt with one customer where a kid cut the USB power dongle to 18 boards. 18. That came to about $25,000 in damages for brand new boards and we couldn't cover any of them because it voided the warranty due to negligence.

Not long after that, I dealt with another school tech who lost a total of 12 projectors over several weeks because the kids would jam paper in to the air ducts which ultimately lead to the bulbs literally exploding inside the unit. I'm sure some still worked but we would have had to charge them quite a sum of money to have the units shipped to us to be properly cleaned due to Mercury, servicing fees, and buying a new bulb. I'm not sure what happened to them after that though but that was about $20,000 worth of projectors. Normally, if the bulb blows before the rated hours or we deem it not due to neglect, we handled it all for free and cross ship a model to them to minimize downtime but not in this case.

There are a lot more stories I could talk about where things like this happen, some are accidents and some are on purpose, either way if you find yourself with a ton of tech equipment in a public school, expect the worst and lock shit up.

Don't worry, last I heard the US is planning on giving kids just iPads. I'm sure those will be very rugged and kid-proof. I know kids already throw their bags on their ground normally, not even thinking about when they get mad, so the whole front side glass should totally stand up to it.

Prez, if you don't mind me asking...how the hell do you get over 250GB? I mean, I am sure I could do it if I tried, I might even be persuaded to believe that I have done it before....but on a regular basis? Job related?

Well, to get the obvious out of the way, on average well less than a gig of it is from torrents. I may occasionally torrent shows I can't find elsewhere on pay services, etc, but in truth, all it took was cutting the cord. My daughter watches two to three hours a day worth of anime and CW crap on Netflix, my wife watches old sitcom re-runs on Hulu for 2 hours a night, and my son and I watch tons of TV over Amazon Instant Video and Netflix. Considering that I'm a night owl, there's usually a TV going non-stop from dusk to dawn in my house. Add in VOIP telephone with two females and a couple of multiplayer gaming-obsessed kids in the house and we blow the cap out of the water without even trying.

Makes me think of my mothers ISP. They would claim that your connection you are paying for is only for 2 devices and any more would require an extra $8 per device (not computer, device. PS3, smartphone, ect...)

Wondering if we manage to get ISPs to stop doing limits will they turn around and try enforcing this, and having things like routers banned in the contract? Kinda like the whole thing of wifi tethering being against cellphone unlimited data plans? Pay per device, not the gig used?

The biggest issue I have with metered internet is that companies like AT&T do business moves like this that throw the whole "limited pipes" into question.

On one hand, they claim they can't really have heavy internet streams on their networks as it would kill their networks. On the other hand, if they can get even more people to pay them money then suddenly their networks would have no problems with the extra load.

So what is it, do the networks have problems with these loads or they don't? Or do the networks need to be greased regularly and they only run on unleaded cash?

It could also be the fact that Gabe Newell isn't stupid and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see what is happening in the world of Apple and Microsoft.

Windows RT took cues from iOS and can only install what is available from the Microsoft store (don't know its name for that). That means no Steam on it. Ever. And since ARM processors are getting more popular, it runs the chance to overtake x86 in a few more years since for most people, it's "fast enough" since people mostly want to check Facebook/light gaming. If ARM does overtake x86, Windows 9 won't happen, it will be Windows RT v2 (or something like that)

OSX 10.8 has an option to only allow you to install from the Apple store only. While it's "Opt in" for now, it looks like Apple might very well be planning to lock OSX down like iOS. While it won't happen this year, it will more likely happen slowly over the next few, kinda like the whole "boil a frog". Slowly edge people into it, sell it to them and make them think it's for their good. "It's a security function, like on iOS, but is also a full OS so you can still do everything you've become accustom to doing with OSX." And with this whole Flashback trojan leading the charge of security nightmare on OSX, it is a very likely future for OSX.

The computer is slowly become a console. Install and run only what the maker says is ok, and it also makes sure that the maker not only makes money with the initial sale, but with every software purchase after it. The sale that keeps on selling. Apple and Microsoft would love ALL their products to do this (not just iOS and XBox).

With this as a possible future, I can see why Linux would be a good market for them. Push Linux, its secure, easy to use (believe it or not if you haven't tried it lately), light on the system resources and more importantly free. And Linux isn't showing signs of wanting to close out digital shops like Steam. Also the Humble Indie bundles keep showing there is quite a market for games on Linux (almost double the market of OSX, except for the current one. Most likely due to the whole "this game needs Adobe Air on Linux to run, something that was discontinued"). Also, all those Humble Bundle games mean there is already a good sized basic library and climbing of games ready for linux, and others can be wrapped in a custom Wine setting to help get more games on Linux (same that happens with many OSX games, they use Cider wrapper).

Having both a laptop and a tablet, I've found that the tablet is nice for reading ebooks and light websurfing... but doesn't replace the laptop. And when people ask I say the same thing. Its nice, but if I had to choose between the laptop and my tablet, byebye tablet.

Personally, I hate trailers like this. Sure, you have nice CG artists that can make some nice pre-rendered scenes.... now how about in game footage instead? So I can see what it looks like and slightly how it plays?

Beamer wrote on Mar 30, 2012, 14:48:I'm in the "this was funny 10 years ago but few seem to do it well these days" camp, but man, a dragons vs WWII game? I want that! It isn't funny to tease something awesome!

Pretty much sounds like they are using their version of ubisoft always online drm but trying to give a online function or two to hide that it is exactly that, always online drm. This is one of the reasons I won't buy Diablo 3, always online drm trying to hide as something else. And for the one who suggested just naming it "world of..." doesn't work. You can easily tell when a game was made for offline and online gaming. Changing the name isn't what makes it an online or offline designed game.

And who also suggested that all games are going to be online only and we should just get with the times, I can't hear you over the how many straight weeks that Skyrim, an offline single player only game, has been in the what? To five selling games on Steam?